What Do I Need to Know About My Assets?

Do any of these issues sound familiar?

We’ve captured information but don’t know who or what it’s for.

We are not getting the data we need from project handover.

Our data is inconsistent and not well controlled

We’ve paid for expensive decision-support tools but don’t have the data to make them work.

  • We’ve captured information but don’t know who or what it’s for.
  • We are not getting the data we need from project handover.
  • Our data is inconsistent and not well controlled.
  • We’ve paid for expensive decision-support tools but don’t have the data to make them work.

Increasingly organizations find themselves struggling with low quality data. The journey from where they are to where they want to be is unclear and the ‘technology-first’ approach that has been treated as a short-cut has consistently failed to deliver (link).

But how do you improve data quality? What does good data quality mean? The answer lies in understanding the information required for your business. Give yourself a target to aspire towards, setup a plan to get there and bring the business with you on the journey.

In this article we discuss the innovative approach taken by a major sustainability infrastructure program that is leading the way in identifying their information requirements.

What are Information Requirements?

Simply put – it’s the information we need to make decisions.

These are typically written in big documents that explain what information is required, then someone is paid to create and enter data into a big spreadsheet, and then someone else enters it into a much bigger spreadsheet.

(Warning: some corners were cut in writing this description.)

Digital conversations often feel like they have an inevitable gravitational pull towards complexity. While this is usually grounded in passion it can sometimes isolate those less versed in specific terminology.

In practice many organizations have lost sight of what information the business is using or never defined it in the first place. In our experience, the best way to start closing this gap is to make it easier for the business to engage in the conversation.

The key to this is keeping information requirements at the right level for the right stakeholders. If you jump straight into the detail, you isolate its customers – the wider business. The best approach is to work with the business to develop “use cases” that describe how data can be used in language they recognize. Then keep them engaged as these have been progressively defined.

Okay great, we’ve got our use cases… but what exactly needs to be defined in detail?

 Information Requirements at their simplest are:

Things: The distinct types of concepts e.g. asset classifications

Things about things: The information associated with classifications

How things relate to other things: How information should be structured

These types of information requirements provide the structure for how information should be defined. Now we’re ready to start defining!

How to define Information Requirements?

Typically, organizations fall into two different camps when it comes to defining information requirements. However, a different approach was adopted by our sustainability client which has proven much more effective.

Broad information requirements to cover all possibilities

“What do other people have and how can we build from that?”

Pros

  • Less likely to have project overruns as information is provided at handover.
  • The business has the information it needs from “day 1”.

Cons

  • Additional unnecessary cost to create and handover information that isn’t required.
  • No clarity over how information is used by the business.

Reluctance to define information requirements without the right level of expertise 

“Let’s wait until we have the right level of expertise and worry about costs later.”

Pros

  • Low risk of unnecessary information being created and handed over.
  • Increased clarity over what information is required due to greater scrutiny over contractual variations.

Cons

  • Significant additional cost associated with contractual variation.
  • Risk of overruns are extremely likely as information isn’t available to manage assets.

Apply an accelerated approach to build information requirements before contracts are created 

“Let’s consider a cost-benefit approach for our information”

Pros

  • Reduced risk of project overruns.
  • Clarity on what how information can be used and managed.
  • Buy-in from the business and supply chain partners.

Cons

  • Increased initial costs for building information standards – but lower overall costs.

The key is in how you apply and adopt industry standards. Industry standards are detailed documents that have been developed by experts globally to describe everything you need to know and everything to lookout for when managing your assets.

Our client discovered they could get ~80% of the results with a fraction of the time and cost. By “casting a wide net” to build a catalogue of information requirements using industry standards as the foundation and then chipping away to remove what they didn’t need, they got what they needed much faster for a fraction of the cost.

But how did they do it?

Here were the key principles they followed:

Connect to use cases

If you can’t justify that data has a use, you risk spending money on something you don’t need. This connection may take time and business engagement but provides a simple framework for ongoing management.

Ask for context

Understand whether users are interacting with data, as part of a workflow or within a cost report. Having these conversations will help to ensure data is structured in the right way for it to be used.

Test the logic

Summarize the approach you are taking to the use case customers. Explain what information requirements you are using and validate them in context. Testing the logic and asking for feedback will help to improve clarity and manage any potential issues.

Connect to use cases

If you can’t justify that data has a use, you risk spending money on something that may not provide any value. This connection may take time and business engagement but provides a simple framework for ongoing management.

Ask for context

Understand whether users are interacting with data, as part of a workflow or within a balance sheet. Having these conversations will help to ensure data is structured in the right way for it to be used.

Test the logic

Summarise the approach you are taking to the use case customers. Explain what information requirements you are using and validate them in context. Testing the logic and asking for feedback will help to gain clarity and manage any potential issues.

How to use Information Requirements

Ideally, the way it was explained helped to contextualize the next steps in the minds of the whole team…

“Think of writing your information requirements as creating a shopping list. It’s the first step in figuring out, ‘What information do I need?’

But remember, a shopping list is just a starting point—it’s your list of ingredients. You also need to decide who’s going to do the shopping. If it’s not you, the list needs to be clear and easy to follow. Sometimes, it takes multiple people going to different stores to gather everything.

Once the ingredients are collected, they need to come together to form a recipe. And just like groceries, you need to check the quality of the ingredients before using them. Over time, your needs—and the recipes you’re preparing—might change.”

Breaking this down into key themes, information requirements need to be:

  1. Understood – everyone needs to understand what is being requested. This means information requirements should be written in plain language that can be understood.
  2. Shared – ideally information requirements are published online in a location that can be accessible internally and externally. This helps to minimize issues with version control and manual email attachments.
  3. Integrated – information requirements should be setup within technologies. This connection between the documented requirements and the technology helps to ensure information is standardized and available.
  4. Managed – information you need today might not be what you need tomorrow. This requires a dedicated team who can look after requirements and data quality.

When is the best time to intervene?

You guessed it – it’s now!

In an era where asset-intensive organisations are finding that one third of their asset value lies in data [Ref 1], companies are increasingly understanding its importance. Why is this figure so high on the balance? Precisely because as organizations grow more complex, data acts as the connective tissue bringing teams together. If you want to change the direction of the business – you need data to drive it.

The trick is to start small, develop one case at a time and prove the approach. Bring the business and the information together in a way that everyone can understand.

In a world where bad quality data is leading to organizations struggling to understand how their assets and businesses are performing, leading infrastructure programmes are starting to take control of their data assets more effectively. This helped them to get more value from these and manage them as they do physical assets.

You wouldn’t pay for an asset that you didn’t understand – why would you do the same for your data?

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If you want to discuss any of this article, please reach out to Alexander Damas